Enlargement

Three years after launching its bid for membership of the European Union, Serbia was officially granted candidate status on 1st March, joining Iceland, Turkey, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as a candidate country.

It has been a long hard road for the Balkan nation, which has been something of a “pariah state” over the last twenty years, considered by many to be the principle aggressor in the Balkans war and responsible for horrific ethnic cleansing campaigns and massacres during that conflict.

But over recent years, Serbia has instituted programs of democratic reform and has made the effort to capture and extradite war criminals such as Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, accused of playing a major role in the aforesaid atrocities. It has also improved relations with Kosovo, its former province which declared independence in 2008, although Belgrade still refuses to recognise it as an independent nation. These were all measures required by the EU for candidate status to be granted.

Romania had raised last-minute objections to Serbia being given candidacy due to concerns over the treatment of a Romanian minority group, the Vlachs, living in Serbia, but withdrew these after the EU commission drafted a special agreement on the issue, vowing to “continue to closely monitor Serbia’s efforts in this regard”.

It may be several years before Serbia is ready to join the EU - candidate countries must meet the requirements for membership which include guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities and the existence of a functioning market economy. Plus, the issue of Kosovo is likely to be a taxing one. 22 EU Member States, including the UK, France and Germany, recognise Kosovo as an independent nation: whether or not Serbia will be obliged to do the same in order to gain full membership remains to be seen. But whatever the future holds, Serbia has taken the first step towards coming in from the cold.

Image source: European Commission

The European Commission reaffirmed its support for Turkish membership this week, as Olli Rehn reassured the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that the Commission ‘is committed to the EU accession process of Turkey ..on the basis of the negotiating framework that was adopted by unanimity by all EU member states and Turkey in October 2005’. Along with Mr Rehn, the Czech and the Swedish foreign ministers, Jan Kohout and Carl Bildt called on Ankara to ‘continue implementing the needed reforms’. Last Tuesday the Turkish Foreign Minister restated that ‘full membership is the only acceptable outcome of the negotiations process’.

Image: European Commission Audiovisual Service

Amidst the gloom of the current economic climate, Commission President Barroso spoke optimistically after meeting with Turkish President Abdullah Gul. He noted progress in the negotiations for Turkish accession, a process which officially began 2005. Of the 35 chapters in the accession process, only ten have been opened and just one completed thus far. Barroso and the Czechs share the hope that two more chapters covering social policy, employment and taxation will be opened before the Czech Presidency comes to an end on the 30th of June.

Image: www.flickr.com/ Tolga “Musato”

2008 has been a year of many changes for the Balkans. The year began with Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17th. Although this decision had been expected, it confronted the international community with a range of new challenges. Like many other states, 22 of the 27 European member states recognised the Kosovo as independent. The EU sent a civilian peace-keeping mission, EULEX, to support the establishment of a democratic state of law. In Serbia, anticipated elections took place on May 11th after Prime Minister Kostunica had resigned. The EU supported the pro-European tendency with the signature of a stability and association agreement. The pro-European democratic party under president Tadic finally won the elections. Serbia further proved its pro-European attitude with the capture of Radovan Karadzic who had been searched for several years by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Bosnia equally signed a stability and association agreement with the EU. On December 15th finally, Montenegro officially applied for EU membership. The negotiations with Croatia are ongoing, whereas in the case of Macedonia different political problems hinder further negotiations.

Photo: www.flickr.com/David Le Masurier

The soap opera staging the French institutional reform and the Turkish bid to become member of the EU continues. A couple of years back, Jacques Chirac approved a law making it mandatory for every new enlargement of the EU to be approved by a referendum. This law, which was widely perceived as being anti Turkish needed to be reconsidered as it also would have affected Croatia among other candidates. The Minister of European affairs Mr. Jouyet therefore suggested scrapping the law as part of Sarkozy’s institutional reform. This has angered a number of conservative MPs who therefore devised an amendment taylor–made for Turkey. Only candidate countries with a population representing more than 5% of the EU’s population would have to be approved by referendum (Croatia would then be safe). It looks however that this “clever” proposal will not fly with president Sarkozy and the French Senate who are afraid on the repercussions on Franco-Turkish relations... The battle is not over, join us for the next episode of “No we don’t want too many Muslims in the EU but it has nothing to do with racism…”

The weekend saw elections taking place in a Macedonia that is eager to join the EU. Outgoing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative party won a comfortable victory and is set to continue its drive for EU and NATO membership. But Macedonia seems to be facing many challenges on its way. The name dispute with Greece over the name of the Macedonia, led Greece to block Macedonia’s bid to join the military organisation at a NATO high level summit in April in Bucharest. Apart from the name dispute with Greece, the Commission has also expressed concerns as to whether the country is ready to join the Union. The most recent Commission assessment report asserted that “frequent tensions and problems in achieving constructive dialogue between major political actors undermined the functioning of the political institutions and led to a slowdown in reforms”. There is still a lot of work to do.

Those were the words of Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan when meeting with the European Parliament’s Foreign Committee on Wednesday 28. Mr. Babacan referred especially to “one particular country” leaving nobody in doubt who that someone could be; France. French President Sarkozy has on several occasions declared publicly that Turkey does not belong in the EU. It woluld be hard to say that the French parliament took notice of Mr. Babacan’s words. On Thursday 28 the French lower house voted on a constitutional reform package. The package would change the current rules, introduced by former President Jacque Chirac, that require a referendum on any country’s EU-membership application. According to the new proposal, approved by the lower house, a referendum would still be compulsory if the population of the candidate country surpasses five percent of the EU population. Now who could that be that the French MPs have in mind? Regardless of what one thinks of Turkish EU-membership a referendum on any country is destined to become a nasty business. It is not worthy of a democracy. The French upper house, the Senate, is due to vote on the proposal 10 June and a final decision has to be reached in when the two houses meet in July.

French Government spokesman Luc Chatel’s words wore spoken when the French government approved plans for constitutional reform that would scrap the obligation for France to hold a referendum on future enlargements e.g. on Turkey. The clause was introduced by a Jacque Chirac in a state of panic when opinion polls suggested that Chirac would not cash in his last political victory by ensuring a “Oui” to the Constitution in 2005. The fears of the President was fuelled, among other thing, by French voters’ scepticism towards Turkish EU-membership. It does not take much imagination to predict how rhetorically ugly and alienating such a referendum campaign could become. The reform envisages that an enlargement has to be approved by the French Congress or by referendum with the President in place deciding which procedure to apply. The reform must be approved by the French Congress with a three-fifths majority and a vote on the bill is scheduled for July.

The week saw the Commission calling for more action against organised crime in Bulgaria. The spark was the murder of two high-profile Bulgarian figures within 24 hours, one of which was a former bodyguard who was writing on… organised crime. Contrary to what the Commission hoped for when Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 the situation has not improved. Despite consistent EU-criticisms, statements and reports, corruption crime is having a field day while court cases are delayed endlessly and investigation is stalled. It is tempting to say “I told you so”.

The words were spoken by Elmar Brok, German centre-right MEP and rapporteur on the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee report on future EU enlargement. The draft report says that EU neighbouring countries do not necessarily have to be offered membership of the Union. Instead, a wider selection of political relations should be offered to the aspiring countries. The report, which is due to be submitted to a plenary vote in June, has caused some distress with states that are hopeful to receive an invitation to the European club in the near future. The report underlines that scepticism of enlargement is becoming the norm rather than the exception in the EU.

Sunday night eight Eastern European countries and Malta took another step towards “full” EU membership. Formally, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Malta have been members of the EU since 2004. In reality, however, the countries have not been allowed to reap the full benefits of EU-membership due to different concerns expressed by the then EU-15. One such concern was with the quality of the border control in the new member states, which led the EU-15 to call for the Schengen-area to be expanded only when the new member states fulfilled certain requirements. Something which led the new EU-citizens to feel as ’second class’ when asked for identification as they travelled to the older EU member states. On Sunday night air border controls were lifted as the EU’s borderless zone was enlarged to these eight new countries. The enlargement of the Shengen area represents a very practical, concrete and politically symbolic change.

The Turkish State Prosecutor has launched legal action to outlaw AKP, the party of the Turkish Prime Minister. Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya argues that the government in place is seeking to establish an Islamic regime in Turkey in violation of the Turkish constitution. The Country’s top prosecutor filed a suit with the Constitutional Court seeking to ban Erdogan and 70 members of his Justice and Development Party from the political scene for five years. Olli Rehn the enlargement Commissioner has derided this initiative as potentially illegal and added that this crisis would not stall the accession process. The liberal group in the European Parliament has also condemned the suit. There is a big risk in commenting and interfering in such a sensitive matter. It would be particularly unfortunate for the EU to be associated by the average Turkish citizen to a political plan designed to undermine the secular tradition of the Turkish State…

Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has for several years been engaged in a dispute over the right to the name Macedonia. A consequence of the dispute is exactly the rather clumsy name FYROM, which is used by the international community, whereas the former Yugoslav Republic’s constitutional name is the Republic of Macedonia. Thursday the name quarrel led Greece to state that while the Hellenic state would support Albania and Croatia’s bid to join NATO, Greece would block FYROM’s NATO bid as long as the name dispute remains unresolved. In the same way Greece insinuated that the dispute could have damaging consequences for FYROM’s hopes to launch EU-membership negotiations later this year.

And so the Portuguese had it their way. Thursday 13 December the European leaders duly paid Lisbon a brief visit to put their name on the Reform Treaty, which has now become the Lisbon Treaty. Friday the gentlemen met again – this time in Brussels - for the traditional summit and the last high-profile event of the Portuguese presidency. One outcome of the summit was the troubled birth of one of the darlings of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Council agreed to set up a ’reflection group’ on the future challenges of the EU. Originally Sarkozy’s idea was to include the question of Europe’s borders in the groups and, with that, the question of Turkish membership to the Union. Other member states such as Sweden and Britain sought to avoid the question of Europe’s borders. Instead issues such as climate change and migration were included in the official mandate. However, mandates can be ambiguous as illustrated in the aftermath of the summit when the heads of state and government competed eagerly in defining what the reflection group should and should not reflect upon. Exactly what child the Council has put on earth remains to be seen.

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband was unmistakably clear when he spoke about enlargement as a tool to ensuring stability and reform in countries adjacent to Europe. “The more the marrier” seemed to be the view on enlargement that was expressed in Mr. Miliband’s speech on the global challenges facing the European Union, delivered at the College of Europe in Bruges. While the prospect of enlargement has unquestionably been the strongest single foreign policy tool of the EU when it comes to the Union’s neighbouring countries, Mr. Miliband’s view on enlargement seems to conflict with his wish to see the Union making a difference across its borders. Whereas EU enlargements traditionally have been followed by a deepening of the Union’s competences and institutional decision making capacity in numerous internal policy issues, the EU still fails to give strong answers to foreign policy questions. Enlarging the Union might be a worthy effort for many reasons. But without institutional reforms another enlargement is not going to make the formulation of a coherent EU foreign policy an easier task.